I’m seeing a lot of hate this year for some reason – this was a looong time ago. Enjoy your independance, but lots of people did a lot of bad things that we now know were wrong. Slavery springs to mind – both sides of the pond were involved there.

If he’s referring to Gitmo, then I’d argue that what our founding fathers wrote is very different from the context of Gitmo.

First off the rights denied to our founding fathers were denied to them as English citizens by their English King. The vast majority of Gitmo prisoners are not U.S. citizens. I’m not saying I agree with the actions, just that it’s not the same situation in that we’re not depriving our own citizens of rights… the rights granted by the constitution.

@Mike: I’m not going to turn this into a political blog. If I’ve been taught anything over the years, it’s that I’m better at writing code than I am at any kind of political discussion.

But everything I’ve heard about Gitmo has had a sense of _wrong_ to it. It may be arguable on technical grounds that it’s okay to keep people locked up 23 of 24 hours a day for years without any formal charges, but it’s sure not a moral high ground.

There are other things, like the civil forfeiture laws, that also fall into this category. These have been around for years, and people get burned by them when they’re abused as a source of revenue. [The logical extension of this discussion gets into “tools to fight the drug war,” and likewise, I also don’t want to go there. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said, and there are other, more capable blogs that cover this stuff better.]
I’ve written my share of letters to congresscritters about these issues. To be honest, that’s been the extent of my efforts. I could do better. (So could the congresscritters, but that’s another story).
So. Ummmmmmmm.